The Role of Awakening Cortisol and Psychological Distress in Diurnal Variations in Affect: A Day Reconstruction Study

People often feel unhappy in the morning but better later in the day, and this pattern may be amplified in the distressed. Past work suggests that one function of cortisol is to energize people in the mornings. In a study of 174 students we tested to see if daily affect patterns, psychological distress, and awakening cortisol levels were interlinked. Affect levels were assessed using the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004) and psychological distress was measured using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (Antony, Bieling, Cox, Enns, & Swinson, 1998). On average positive affect increased markedly in a linear pattern across the day whilst negative affect decreased linearly. For the highly distressed this pattern was stronger for positive affect. Lower than average morning cortisol, as assessed by two saliva samples at waking and two samples 30 minutes after waking, predicted a clear increasing pattern of positive affect throughout the day. When we examined the interlinkages between affect patterns, distress, and cortisol our results showed that a pronounced linear increase in positive affect from morning through to evening occurred chiefly among distressed people with below average cortisol levels upon awakening. Psychological distress, whilst not strongly associated with morning cortisol levels, does appear to interact with cortisol levels to profoundly influence affect.Cortisol, Psychological Distress, Positive Affect, Diurnal Variation, Day Reconstruction Method

An Energy-Minimization Finite-Element Approach for the Frank-Oseen Model of Nematic Liquid Crystals: Continuum and Discrete Analysis

This paper outlines an energy-minimization finite-element approach to the computational modeling of equilibrium configurations for nematic liquid crystals under free elastic effects. The method targets minimization of the system free energy based on the Frank-Oseen free-energy model. Solutions to the intermediate discretized free elastic linearizations are shown to exist generally and are unique under certain assumptions. This requires proving continuity, coercivity, and weak coercivity for the accompanying appropriate bilinear forms within a mixed finite-element framework. Error analysis demonstrates that the method constitutes a convergent scheme. Numerical experiments are performed for problems with a range of physical parameters as well as simple and patterned boundary conditions. The resulting algorithm accurately handles heterogeneous constant coefficients and effectively resolves configurations resulting from complicated boundary conditions relevant in ongoing research.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures, 3 table